Posted (03/10/01 - 1000h)
26 half hour episodes
Evangelion is one of my favourite anime series ever. Ever ever ever. It is the year 2015, and an earth-shattering catastrophe has taken place. Much of the polar ice caps have melted, and coastal cities have sunken underwater. There is a mysterious, aggressive enemy referred to as the "Angels" who, for some reason, want to attack a fortified city by the name of Tokyo-3. The only defense Earth has against these incredibly powerful and massive beings is a series of massive robots, named Evangelion units (Evas for short).
For most of the series, the reasons behind much of what's going on are left as unanswered questions. What are the Angels, and where did they come from? What is their goal? What really happened, so many years ago, that destroyed the Northern polar ice cap? Why are the only ones who can pilot the Evas so young? Why are there so many unexplained religious references?
There are many more questions like these that are begging to be answered for most of the series, and in the original series (which ran out of budget close to the end), some of these questions were left unanswered. The movie form of Evangelion, "The End of Evangelion," wraps up most of these loose ends, and adds some closure and insight into two of the Eva pilots, Asuka and Shinji.
The main three Eva pilots are Ayanami Rei, Asuka Souryu Langley, and Ikari Shinji. Asuka is German, so that is her actual first name. The other two follow last-name-first-name style. The cast of characters is fairly large, and each person has a very unique personality and their own reason for doing what they do and being where they are in life, except for Shinji.
Shinji does have his own reasons for doing things, but for the most part his reasoning is "because someone wanted me to." Much of the series deals with Shinji's personality, and his repeated psychological breakdowns. While he does make some progress as a person through the series, he is still a cold, helpless, antisocial emotional wreck at the end of the series. I'm very glad though, that he stayed the way he was right up until the bitter end. In The End of Evangelion, Shinji doesn't have a sudden change of personality so that he can see the bright side of things to wrap up the show happily, as he would have done if this were a Hollywood film. Instead, he stays true to his character, though it makes the last scene of the movie somewhat shocking and messed up.
"Messed up" is actually how many people describe this series. I would tend to agree. This anime is high on the weirdness scale, but it's not over-the-top insanity as some would have you believe.
Each episode in this series is very entertaining on its own, with the minor exceptions of the review episode in the middle, and episodes 25 and 26 which were made while the director was under extreme emotional stress (his family had left him, and he almost committed suicide), and on top of that, they ran out of money to make the show.
The plot is epic, and has a strong streak of global conspiracy throughout. Character development is never lacking, and character interaction is especially good in this series. Not only are characters unique and realistic, but in some scenes, the bonds between people are almost palpable.
The series poses the questions "why do we live?", "what's so special about being human?", and goes on to explore the human psyche through the lives of Rei, Asuka, and especially Shinji. It also made me think specifically "how would I react in that situation?"
Shinji has to deal with a lot of crap, and much of it comes from the fact that the Eva's control chamber has sensory feedback. In other words, when his Eva unit is knocked out of commission, it turns into a sensory deprivation chamber, causing massive amounts of psychological harm.
I could go on about this anime forever - I like it so much... so I should try to cut it off sometime soon.
The plot is deep and involved, the characters and the way they interact is very well thought out, the music is okay, the animation is quite good in the series and was incredible in the movie, and all in all this is one of my favourite anime. I own the box set of 8 DVDs, as well as the movie, and they were all worth the price I paid. This anime deserves every bit of the "Sugoi" rating that I gave it.